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He laughed. He actually laughed!
Amelia couldn’t take it any more. She lifted her small fists and pummelled his chest, tears of frustration and impotence sparkling on her lashes. ‘I hate you!’ she said. ‘How dare you do this to me? How dare you?’
‘This conversation is futile,’ he said. ‘The next time this boat stops, it will be in a Catarno port. I suggest you take the next week to make your peace with that, and start working out how you can make amends to your long-suffering family.’
Her nostrils flared at his haughty, judgemental tone.
‘In the meantime, your bedroom is through there. As you clearly can’t stand being around me,’ he said, with indolent mockery layered over the words, ‘I suggest you go and make use of it.’
Amelia ground her teeth. He was the most arrogant, infuriating man she’d ever met. ‘This is a mistake.’
He lifted one shoulder, careless now. ‘Dinner is served at eight. Please feel free to join me. If you think you are capable of behaving with a level of basic civility, that is.’
‘You get what you deserve,’ she muttered, spinning on her heel and leaving the room, thinking she’d never been so glad to walk out on someone in her life.
CHAPTER THREE
THERE WERE SOME things Benedetto found almost too painful to think about, some memories he kept permanently shelved because they still had the power to tear him down, even now, years after his entire life had been torn asunder.
When he thought of Sasha, he preferred to focus on what their life had been before her diagnosis. Before he’d learned that her fainting and exhaustion and poor eyesight had been caused by an inoperable brain tumour. Before he’d had to come face to face with his greatest fear as a single parent and acknowledge that he would lose her.
His best memories of Sasha were of her as a baby, her sweet, chubby, competent frame dragging across the floor at only five months of age, before she crawled a month later. She’d been walking by eight months, babbling and smiling almost constantly. There’d never been a happier child, he was sure of it.
He remembered her first day at nursery school, how she’d marched in without a backwards glance, confidently making friends and teaching the other children her favourite games, before waving him off with a grin that spread from ear to ear. He remembered how great she’d been at everything she tried—a natural reader, athletic, kind, considerate.
She had been his daughter and so he’d loved her, but it had been impossible not to love Sasha. Everyone had felt it. She had been magical.
At her funeral, the priest had said that she’d glowed so brightly, even if just for a short time, and Benedetto had been struck by the truth of that. Perhaps people were born with a certain amount of light to shine, and Sasha had shone all hers out early.
Afterwards, when she was gone, and he’d had to accept that, no matter how much money he’d spent on chasing down state-of-the-art treatments, his failure had equated to her death, he’d been in a state that defied explanation. There were no words to describe his grief. He had been bereft, almost deranged with his sadness.
He’d sought solace in liquor, in women, in dropping out of his life altogether. The fortune he’d been steadily building since seventeen, when he’d founded his first company, had gradually floundered owing to his total inattention.
And Benedetto hadn’t cared.
If it hadn’t been for Anton stepping in and appointing an interim CEO, it would have all been lost. But Anton had known.
Somehow, he’d understood that the clouds would eventually clear, that Benedetto would come up for air and look for the hallmarks of his life, for some semblance of what had been before, and that there had to be something for him to return to. Perhaps Anton had known that the challenge of rebuilding his business would be the one thing to draw Benedetto out of his grief. And so Anton had overseen operations as much as his role as heir to the throne of Catarno had allowed, had made sure that Benedetto would have something to return to one day, even when his personal wealth had been decimated.
Anton hadn’t just been there for Benedetto, he’d shown him every step of the way that he would always be there for him.
Benedetto owed him an enormous debt of gratitude, and repaying it was immensely important. While kidnapping Amelia, and whatever the hell had happened between them, didn’t sit well with him, he knew it didn’t really matter. Not as much as helping Anton.
Anton had grown up with the weight of the world on his shoulders, his royal legacy meaning he’d had to be the best at everything, had been scrutinised mercilessly lest he put a foot wrong. It was Amelia who’d had the freedom to enjoy her royal lifestyle without the responsibilities. It was high time she faced up to them, Anton was right.
The first thing Amelia did when she got to her room was drop down onto the bed and scream into one of the pillows, a scream of abject anger and frustration, of a thousand million emotions that were setting her nerves jangling and making her want to dive off the side of the boat.
The second was to move to a window to ascertain the sense of that plan. If she were to jump ship, could she actually swim to shore?
A quick scan of the view from her windows showed her that they’d moved fast—Valencia was just a speck in the distance now. Even for a confident swimmer like her, that would be pushing it.
Or was it that she didn’t truly want to escape?
As if to prove to herself that wasn’t the case, she went to reach for her camera backpack, to grab her phone, only to remember it had been left in the corridor, presumably when she’d fainted.
With a racing heart—not from fear but from the adrenaline and possibility of running into Benedetto again—she moved quickly, striding across the room, ignoring the pulsing heat between her legs, the yearning that remained unabated in her body, and dragged open the door. She looked left and right, saw no one, so stepped out, looking for her bag.
It was nowhere.
